


Spotless

by InsidetheLocket



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 06:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsidetheLocket/pseuds/InsidetheLocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU with heavy influence from the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Castiel wipes the memories of the Winchesters after Naomi neglects to wipe his.<br/>~Just in case: TW for dubious consent~</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spotless

**Random thoughts for Valentine’s Day, 2012: The day’s a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap and/or get laid. I ditched Sam today, took a drive out to Chicago. I don’t know why. I’m an impulsive person, I guess. I just woke up in a funk this morning. Sam was reading 1984. I liked that book. Kinda creeped me out though.**

**As you can see I have no idea how I’m supposed to keep a diary. Who am I, Judy Blume?**

**I should make an excuse to fix my car.**

**It’s goddamned freezing on this beach. Chicago in February. Brilliant, Dean. Why the hell Sam wants me to start keeping this journal again I’ll never know. Dad had his, sure, but not for feelings or whatever. Pages are ripped out—don’t remember doing that. Looks like this is the first time I’ve written in three years. See how far it’s gotten me, Sammy? **

**Sand is overrated. It’s just tiny little rocks. Maybe if I met someone new… I guess my chances of that are somewhat diminished, seeing as I’m incapable of maintaining healthy relationships with people already. Maybe I should go back and find a quick job. Jobs don’t need introspection, introspection is no good. Jobs are easy.**

**Okay, who the hell wears a khaki trench coat?**

 

***

Castiel had to make it stop, he couldn’t hurt them anymore. It would have been better had the Winchesters never met him.

He had achieved clarity after his last “visit” with Naomi—it was the first time she neglected to erase his memory, and every moment he had spent telling her what he knew about Sam and Dean, every involuntary report, jumped into breathtaking focus upon his return to earth. Whether that had been a fault in her judgment he was unsure, but he was not letting the opportunity go to waste. He refused to let his betrayal go on any longer.

Cas told Dean to purchase a room only for himself and his brother, as he had work to do. By the time they finished checking into the motel he knew exactly how he would go about leaving the Winchesters without being tracked. Ironically, Naomi had inspired him.

He would wait until they were asleep, and as he waited he mentally harangued himself. It was a violation of trust and of privacy. It was robbery. He would be defiling their minds. He was betraying his friends and they wouldn’t even know it.

But it would be for the best.

Under cover of darkness he flew to them for the last time. Or that’s what he told himself—he did not believe his abstinence would last very long. One would think an angel would not so often indulge himself, though whether he had ever been a good angel was always in question. In any case, he  _was_  a soldier. He would approach the situation as such.

He went to Sam first, sitting on the side of the creaking mattress and placing the heel of his palm against his forehead. He rested his fingers in Sam’s hair and let his mind begin to sift through the young hunter’s memories. It wasn’t difficult, but he had to be meticulous. Memory extraction and suppression required attention and a thoroughness that could not be rushed. Leaving a single memory out of context could lead to questions and unnecessary discomfort. Everything he had done for them—and that they had done for him—had to be justified without his existence or erased completely. Sam stirred in his sleep, as if aware of Castiel’s intentions. His brow wrinkled with concentration and Cas could feel Sam’s mind fighting against his. It was a valiant effort of course, but in his subdued state it was feeble in comparison to the angel’s strength.

When he finished his work he planted in Sam’s mind the desire to sleep in the Impala for the next few hours. He wanted privacy with Dean.

As Sam’s sleepwalking figure lumbered toward the doorframe Cas felt, more than heard, his brother wake. Maybe that was for the best, too. He rose to lock the door again as Dean quickly stood, the knife from under his pillow in hand.

“It’s only me, Dean.”

“Turn around.”

Castiel patiently did as he was told, spreading his arms and dropping them in a gesture of disarmament.

Dean sighed, “You can’t do that to me, man.” He tossed the knife onto the pillow and slumped back onto his bed, running a hand through his disheveled hair and scratching the back of his neck. He looked up at Cas, who had taken a few steps forward. “Where’d Sam go?”

“Uhm, out.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Apprehension creeped back into his voice.

“It means he’s not here.”

Cas stepped closer to Dean, who cautiously stood to defend himself.

 “What did you do?” His voice dropped dangerously low. This was one of the many things Castiel admired about him—undying devotion toward family. It was venerable.

Levelly, he replied, “He’s fine. He went to the car.”

“How do I know you’re not full of crap?” he backed up to match Cas’s next advance, straight into the wall.

“Faith.”

Castiel closed the distance between them with a few quick strides, simultaneously moving the knife from the pillow with a flick of the wrist. If Dean wasn’t sure that something was wrong, he knew it to be so when the dirty orange streetlight filtering through the blinds glinted off of the tears beginning to well in Cas’s eyes. There was no time to react before their lips met, but the duration of the convergence left Dean wondering vaguely why he didn’t do something other than close his eyes—or if he were dreaming. If it were a dream, though, it was different than most. Cas never cried in reality, let alone in his subconscious.

The kiss was drawn out; hungry and hard. Cas had grabbed Dean’s face, though one hand was wandering to cup the back of his head. After the initial immobilizing shock, Dean moved in time with him, answering the kiss with just as much fire and much less control. His hands sprang into motion, greedily clutching fistfuls of his trench coat, his hair, his tie, pulling him closer and terrified to let go.

Somewhere between having his shirt pulled off and falling onto the bed, Dean remembered first that this was not been how he ever imagined "it" happening, and second that something was seriously wrong. If he was making it happen, why wouldn’t there be?

At this revelation, he noticed the first memories slipping away.

His eyes flew open and flashed side to side, rolling across the ceiling as Castiel pushed harder against his body, kissing his throat and squeezing his eyes closed tight against what was to come, against the pain and confusion and betrayal creeping into Dean’s features while he choked out a “What the hell?”

And so began the end.

“Cas.”

Events burned into his mind were pulled forward and melted away into the background of his thoughts before disappearing completely

“No, wait—”

Dean pushed him away. Once. Twice. Castiel was relentless.

“You can’t do this!”

He found himself pinned to the bed. His arms and legs strained against invisible bonds, one thieving hand pressed against his chest and the other on his forehead.

“I can’t forget y—”

“Don’t fight me, Dean.” Cas interrupted as he struggled under him and growled various expletives. He willed the hunter to relax, and he gradually stilled. “By morning I’ll be gone.”

 

***

The memories of Purgatory were difficult for Castiel to separate himself from. He had not realized how intense Dean’s desire to find him had been—that it had been his sole purpose to bring him “home.” Cas, as he began to discover, had been his driving force; Dean had not cared if he himself made it back to earth.  Not without his angel. With the dissolving of the knowledge of his presence there many of the memories collapsed entirely, requiring that new ones be constructed. The human mind was indeed amazing, but infinitely malleable.

Dean groaned under him, “Orwell?”

“Yes.” Their thoughts were linked more closely than he had accounted for, and he found that he could not force Dean into unconsciousness. He was not surprised, nor did he ever expect this would be as easy as it had been with Sam.

He would have to resort to other distractions.

“So that’s all this is. Distraction.” Dean spat caustically in reply to the hand on his head sliding over his body and resting on his hip.

His eyes narrowed, “If only it were that simple.” He said, tugging alternately and swiftly at Dean’s boxers and his own pants.

“Fuck.” He sighed.

“That is what you call it, I suppose.”

Dean’s head dropped backward onto the mattress upon feeling Cas against him. He wanted it, he ached for it. He should know by now to be careful what he wished for.

“I’ll admit I wish this were under," he paused. "Different circumstances.”

“Yeah, me too.”

It hurt.

Not physically, but it hurt him to know that he was losing parts of himself, seeing how “we are the sum of all the moments of our lives.” Forgetting is tantamount to indifference, and that isn’t something Dean is good at even in the worst of times. What hurt worse was the conflicted emotion and sensation he experienced. How can ignorance be bliss when understanding something as truth was blissful in itself? Cas was good at—

_Holy shit._

He wasn’t sure if that was spoken aloud or not. Cas was  _very_  good at sexual gratification. Dean couldn’t help but wonder how many pizza men or demons he had learned these things from; not that he could enjoy it the way he wanted. He understood what he meant by distraction—he could barely think straight. With difficulty he tried for a little while to hide memories of Cas in places they didn’t belong, but the angel caught on too quickly for him to continue, and the “you’re only making this harder on yourself” reproach raised burning, angry bile into his throat.

What hurt the most was knowing that _Cas_ was stealing those parts of him.

When something is taken from your mind you notice the absence. Not for long, but for long enough to feel your heart drop out of its cavity and leave another hole within you. This sensation repeated over and over again in Dean’s chest as he forgot the sound of Castiel’s wings when he seemed to materialize from nowhere. The way he held a cell phone, his voicemail message, and how he stood so formally straight-backed as he spoke into the device. The way his lips moved when he spoke, and the way his presence resonated throughout the limited space in the Impala. The countless and remarkable smitings he had witnessed. How to pray for a friend’s help.

Dean was unaware, but he also forgot the moment in Hell when Castiel found him, bloody and broken and soiled by the delight he took in torturing other members of the bloody and broken condemned. In fact, this particular action hurt Cas more than it did him.

He forgot how he writhed under the agonizingly graceful sound of the too-pure voice calling out to him, “Dean Winchester, you are saved.”

He forgot being put back together by the same hands that now tore him apart.

***

And there was nothing he could do.

_“That was pretty nice timing, Cas.”_

_“We had an appointment.”_

_Dean clapped his hand on his shoulder and leaned forward for emphasis._

_“Don’t ever change.”_

“No, Cas,  _please_.” He abruptly halted the rhythm of motion between them, panicked, “Please let me keep this, just this one.”

“Dean…”

“Please, Cas. Don’t you take that from me.” His voice shook.

He stopped for a moment and kissed him to quiet his pleas. Heat pricked his eyes as Dean kissed him back. Sloppy. Desperate.

Their lips parted with a quiet sucking noise, “Dean, I can’t—”

“Then leave it!” He kissed his neck. “Please, Cas,” his jaw. “Just for now,” his mouth. “Just leave it for now.” He could be a distraction, too.

“Why?”

“Because that’s when I knew, Goddamn it. That’s when I knew.”

He left it without another word. It could wait. There were others to take care of. He pushed onward, enticing a moan from deep in Dean’s throat as he entered his mind again.

_“It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed that hard.” And Cas made it happen._

_“Personal space? We’ve talked about this.” Not that he had actually cared._

_“I gave everything for you, and this is what you give to me?” Dean could taste the coppery film of blood in his mouth._

_“Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” He remembered hoping Sam couldn’t see his ears turning red._

_“Don’t make me lose you, too.”_

He was pretty sure he said that one out loud.

 

***

_“Hey,” Dean said, looking around the shack, “This is the day we met. You waltzed in this dump like you owned the place." A slight smile broke upon his features._

_"I remember being drawn to you, even then. I remember thinking it was weird, being drawn to something that was probably going to kill me. You were in that dirty trench coat I’d come to know… and hate. You know, I didn’t really think much about it at the time, you were too busy blowing all the fuses and taking shotgun blasts like they tickled.” His laugh reverberated strangely in the memory. He played along with it, repeating his words from that night: “Who are you?”_

_Cas responded, “I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.”_

_“Yeah, thanks for that… This is when I stabbed you.”_

_Dean did. It felt good in a way, but superficially. There was never much satisfaction in hurting Cas, even when he managed to._

_A corner of his mouth twitched upward, “You didn’t even blink.”_

_Cas didn’t. He pulled the knife out, smirking._

_“Then you knocked Bobby out cold.”_

_Cas did._

_“We need to talk, Dean. Alone.” He walked to a nearby table while Dean knelt and went through the motions of checking Bobby’s pulse, “Your friend is alive.”_

_Dean looked up at him with an expression radically different from the one he had worn originally. Accusation and demand gave way to reverence. Sorrow. His voice was softer this time when he asked, “Who are you?”_

_“Castiel.”_

_He smiled internally at the way Cas’s mouth formed the word, “Yeah, I figured as much.” He stood, “What are you?”_

_“I’m an angel of the Lord.” He shifted his weight, repeating his past movements and stepping forward._

_Dean paused, bowing out from the stage his possibly emaciated hippocampus had made for them, his smile strained, “You really threw me for a loop on that one. Gave me goosebumps.”_

_“I know, I saw it. In your face, your mind, your soul… You did have faith, though, that I couldn’t see; it wasn’t my definition of the word. I was wrong.”_

_“Sam never doubted you. I just couldn’t believe it. Everything I saw… It—you—weren’t possible.”_ _He hesitated, “I wondered why I wasn’t like him, you know?”_

_“Because you didn’t believe me: ‘Good things do happen, Dean.’ ” He quoted himself._

_Instinctively his mouth moved, “Not in my—well, you know how that went.”_

_Castiel’s face changed, curious and surprised at the creature before him, “What’s the matter?” he echoed, tilting his head to better look into Dean’s eyes._

_Dean tensed visibly, “Stop.”_

_“You don’t think you deserve to be saved.”_

_He flinched at the words._

_“I was right then, wasn’t I?” observed Cas, taking leave of his role._

_“You had the whole human race pegged.” Dean chuckled. His face fell as he looked past the ruffled mass of black hair, “I still don’t know if I deserve it. What’s dead should stay dead. At least in my experience.”_

_The grey walls were beginning to tear away silently, leaving gaping white spaces between the remaining weather warped planks, breaking the useless sigils that had been painted onto the walls. Bobby’s unconscious body had disappeared._

_Cas found Dean’s gaze again, staring intently so as to keep Dean’s eyes on his._

_“It was worth every moment in Hell, looking for you. Every moment on earth, every moment I spent graceless and broken. Everything I gave for you, Dean Winchester, I would not ask for again.”_

_The hunter choked, clenching his jaw with nearly enough force to split his molars, his hands tightened into fists that curled inward toward his body on either side. Cas moved to stand closer to him, the ground was deteriorating in patches, giving way to blankness that circled the two like some lurking and predatory animal waiting to swallow them whole._

_“Tell me I can get this back.” Dean demanded through gritted teeth._

_There was no reply._

_“Cas, tell me this isn’t permanent.”_

_“I don’t know.”_

_Dean released the hissing breath that had been painfully stretching his lungs. “Cas, you son-of-a-bitch, that’s not good enough. Say you can put it back together. Say you can fix me. Goddamn it, say_ something _!”_

_“I won’t.” The assertion punched a hole through both of their stomachs, rebounding on the invisible walls. Too loud, too harsh, too instantaneous._

_Dean recovered himself quickly, the encroaching border of white was threatening the dust in which they stood._

_“Then you’d better take damn good care of them.”_

_“Of course, Dean.”_

Castiel understood that there was very little left to remove. Fortunately though, it seemed that Dean was still himself. He had never changed, really, only grown. The fact that Cas had been a catalyst could not be questioned, but Dean had always had it in him: to have faith. To love. Dean’s soul had always been blindingly bright, even in Hell, despite the adamant caking of filth he hid beneath.

 “This is it, Dean. It’s going to be gone soon.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.” The phrase paled in comparison to what Cas felt. That was another thing to testify for Dean’s extraordinary brilliance. He evoked emotion even in those who were thought to have none.

Dean glared at the ceiling, swallowing hard, “Does it make you feel any better?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

Dean closed his eyes. “Me neither” what? It was warm. He was here.

He…?

Cas.  _Cas_. Don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget.

Don’t forget…

 

***

_Light and shadow flickered over Dean’s face as he opened his eyes again. There was a fire. He had always wanted to be a firefighter, maybe he was saving his m—no, that’s not what this was. This was where his faith failed him._

_Castiel stood in a ring of burning oil, looking after him and Bobby and Sam just before they made their escape from the amorphous oncoming storm of demons._

_He knew that he and Cas were alone despite the extra audience members. They ran out the door, and he followed for a moment on impulse. He stopped and turned as he had before, but he was not silent this time._

_“I wish… I had stayed._ Now _I wish I had stayed,” he said to the floor._

_“Then why did you go?” Cas rebutted._

_“I don’t know. I felt like a scared little kid. Like it was above my head, I don’t know.”_

_“You were afraid?”_

_“Yeah. I thought you knew that about me.”_

_There was a pause between them._

_“What if you stayed this time?”_

_“I walked out the door, Cas. There’s no memory left.”_

_“Come back and make up a goodbye at least. Pretend we had one.”_

_He walked back toward the circle of fire, crossing over it apprehensively. He knew better than most that even memories could hurt you._

_“Cas…”_

_The angel placed a hand gently in his, tilting his head and staring with freakish intensity like he always did. “Goodbye, Dean.”_

_He stared back, his eyes flicking between Cas’s left and right. They were practically black here. He knew that wasn’t right, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember their actual color. His gut compressed and his throat was raw, eyebrows pushed together in consternation,  eyes tightening into slits, mouth pressing into a line as he shook his head slightly.“You knew, right?” Baring his teeth, he repeated himself with a statement rather than a question, “You knew.”_

_Cas smiled sadly at him, nodding almost imperceptibly before he closed his offending eyes and leaned forward._

_“Meet me in Chicago,” Castiel whispered against his lips._

That night,—or what was left of it, the sun was beginning to creep over the horizon in blue haze—mended to spotlessness and returned to their respective beds, the Winchester brothers slept better than they ever had.

Walking from the motel and scrubbing his tearstained face with the sleeve of his coat, a cloud of vapor escaped Castiel’s mouth and cooled in the freezing air.

He realized rather objectively that it was Christmas.

 

***

**I still don’t really get why I came out to this godforsaken strip of sand. The guy with the trench coat looked at me funny, like he thought he knew me or something. I don’t really get that either. Anybody I don’t know who looks at me like that is always trouble. But, hey, I need some trouble right about now. I’m following him.**

**Sam, if you find this and I’m not attached to it, the face on the other side of this page is him. I should’ve been an artist. He’s around six foot, blue eyes, black hair. Let’s hope he keeps his skin on, huh?**

Dean tucked the journal into the inside pocket of his jacket and kept his eyes on the figure that almost blended into the color of the sand, were it not for his black pants and hair. And… Jesus Christ, was his tie on backwards? Dean Winchester was not going to be threatened by a punk who didn’t know how to dress himself.

The man had begun to walk toward the tall buildings that defiantly prodded the sky and barricaded the city from the water. “Off to see the wizard.” He mumbled to himself. Dean followed parallel to his subject, headed for the Impala. His heart beat a little faster with excitement when the familiar creaking emanated from the door of the old beauty. He never let the stranger out of his sight, only once blinking as he maneuvered into the low seat—and in that blink he had vanished.

Staring harder at the spot the man had disappeared from the hunter cursed under his breath. Suddenly, accompanied by a sound suspiciously similar to flapping wings, a mass came into his peripheral vision, sitting in the passenger’s seat and grabbing the wrist which instinctively had flown to the stick shift. He cursed again, much louder this time as he tried to escape the intruder reaching two fingers toward his forehead. Skin met skin and Dean cried out immediately at the searing, stabbing pain in his head. Images flooded his mind in unbearable sensory overload, but he somehow, perhaps out of stubborn interest, did not lose consciousness. The throbbing subsided to an ache as he regained control of his breathing. His face relaxed from its excruciated twisting and he opened his unfocused eyes to meet a squinting blue pair leaning over him.

“Cas?”

The angel’s face crinkled into an ecstatic smile.

“Hello, Dean.”


End file.
